For a brief spell this year, I seemed to have forgotten that Mitt Romney is one of the phoniest politicians who have ever sought the U.S. presidency — and that includes Donald Trump. The irony here is that my contempt for Romney faded for a short while only when he blasted Trump as “a phony.” It was a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. And it was perhaps based on a desperate sense that the Republican Party might come to its senses and dump Trump in favor of Romney. Romney ran for president himself in...

The second time Mitt Romney ran for president — in 2012, when he lost the general election to Barack Obama — he got a reputation as one of the flip-floppingest politicians of modern times. There was hardly an issue on which the Mittster hadn’t been on both sides. He seemed to figure that voters would pay attention only to his latest positions. And some of them probably did. Well, as you probably have heard, Romney is considering another run for the White House in 2016. And once again, he’s flipping and flopping all...

It seems that every time I write something about the impending race for the Republican presidential nomination, the field of potential candidates is bigger. By one recent count, there are now 25 such would-be candidates. The truth, of course, is that the vast majority of them will be gone before the first GOP primary election a year from now. But still, too many likely will flatter themselves for too long before facing the harsh reality that they ain’t presidential timber. Frank Bruni of The New York Times suggests HERE that Mitt...

If THIS ordinarily doctrinaire plutocrat can understand the situation, why can’t most of his partymates? Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has joined the cadre of Republicans supporting minimum wage increases. “I, for instance, as you know, part company with many of the conservatives in my party on the issue of the minimum wage,” Romney said in a Friday appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think we ought to raise it. Because frankly, our party is all about more jobs and better pay.” Romney’s comments...

Barack Obama is the first president since Dwight Eisenhower to win two consecutive elections by more than 51 percent of the popular vote. But to hear some people tell it, Obama’s victories are tainted, mainly because he didn’t do well among old, white, rural voters — y’know, the real Americans. Michael Medved made that kind of argument in the Wall Street Journal the other day. And Heather Digby Parton smacked it down HERE: If the majority of women who vote for Democrats are young, single and black or brown, how can...